


antistrophe

by notbecauseofvictories



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, the slow process of healing and recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 08:43:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10433862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbecauseofvictories/pseuds/notbecauseofvictories
Summary: Cassian didn't talk, at first.





	

Cassian didn’t talk, at first. There didn’t seem anything else to say.

 

 

 

Mothma came at some point. Cassian woke up and she was at his bedside, sitting ramrod-straight, so very tall and white, even moreso washed out by the lights of the medbay. (She made him think of the columns on Imenthe—natural salt deposits like spires, like teeth ringing the great and violent sea. He killed a man there, got blood on all that white, white salt. And afterward he had sat in the sand, watched the tide come in and wash it all away.

Mon Mothma always made him think of Imenthe.)

She was studying his face now, and Cassian raised his eyebrows at her. She smiled a little. “Ah, Captain. I—have spent the last half-hour trying to decide what I would say.” 

She was quiet a moment, then the smile turned rueful. “I’m still not certain whether there is anything I _could_ say.”

Cassian snorted, shut his eyes again. After a moment, he felt a very cool hand pressed to his forehead. “Cassian,” Mothma said, and there was something almost human in her voice, a thing like kindness. “Cassian, you saved us. You have given hope to us all. How will we ever repay you?”

The meddroid had been very clear that he wasn’t supposed to move, not unassisted. Cassian risked it to turn his head away, screwing his eyes shut so tightly he could see those little floating stars flare to life behind his eyelids.

Mothma drew her hand away. 

He heard her stand, the chair scraping a little as she did. “Bodhi Rook was released from bacta suspension last night,” she said, and her voice was cool again, impersonal. “He is expected to make a full recovery. The technicians are still working to fully recover K-2SO’s backup, but…I believe this means you were more than just successful in your mission, Captain. You brought everyone home.

“I thought you might be interested to know,” Mothma added after a moment. Her boots made a sharp, clipped noise on the stone floor, and then she was gone. 

Cassian went back to sleep.

 

 

 

(He only vaguely remembers what happened after Scarif. The adrenaline faded quickly after he shot the Imperial officer in white, and in its place came a rising pain, pain like the firestorm that engulfed Jedha. By the time they stumbled from the lifttube, Jyn was the only thing holding him upright; Jyn was telling him, _cassian cassian c’mon, just a little farther, okay? just a little—it’ll be over soon, you can rest, I’ll let you rest, just—just—_

But the rest is a scattered succession of images, half-memories: the sound of a ship’s engine overhead, and Jyn shouting  _here, we’re here!_ , a heavy weight on Cassian’s chest and screams he couldn’t make out (was that him screaming?) too much pain—he thinks he passed out once or twice; someone asking for his medical history and Cassian slurring, _ask kaytoo, he keeps my records,_ before remembering—

_I can’t feel my legs,_ he said at one point, he remembers that. Jyn’s face swimming into his vision, the red of blood streaked across her cheek.  _I can’t…that’s not good, is it, if I can’t…_

Flickering lights, medical jargon he couldn’t understand. Someone saying _spine,_ and _spine_ again. (Every time he shut his eyes he could feel himself falling again, the whip-bang of the metal landing—) His spine again. Jyn’s voice, high and tight, saying _yes, okay, yes. do whatever you have to._

When he woke up in the medbay on Yavin, he was alone.)

 

 

 

Cassian’s dreams were confused, a muddled haze of dead sentients clawing at his skin and his mother’s face—out of focus, distant and cold as a moon; he barely remembered enough of her to dream it anymore—and then suddenly, a cool pressure on his mind, rippling outwards. He was standing at the edge of a vast ocean, breathing in the cold tang of salt and the water. 

It was quiet.

He exhaled, and then he was lying in the medbay, and the sound of waves beating against the shore was just the thrum of blood in his ears.

It took him a moment to realize that it was Chirrut sitting at the foot of his cot, and not some creature of sea and sky, all strangeness. That was just Baze was pacing up and down the medbay floor, limping. His scowl wasn’t actually any deeper than usual—as Cassian looked, the ladder of scarring along the side of Baze’s face swam into focus. It made him look even more dour than usual. 

(Some sort of granade, then; Cassian recognized the blast pattern.)

“I’m being serious,” Baze said suddenly, stopping to rub his thigh in an irritable way. “They measured it wrong, it’s a good two fingers shorter—”

“A master should not blame the tools when he cannot use them,” Chirrut said with a smile. “You’re overcompensating, I can hear your breathing change when you anticipate every other step. That’s not the prosthesis’s fault.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like anything new,” Chirrut laughed. "It took almost sixteen years to convince him to kiss me, you know.”

Cassian blinked when he realized that was addressed to him, Chirrut’s smile directed just over his head. Cassian exhaled, and Chirrut’s smile took on a distinctly  _smirk_ -like quality. “Oh, it’s true. Here I was, respecting my beloved’s maidenly shyness—”

“ _Maidenly shyness—!_ ” Baze said in a strangled voice, and even Cassian bit back a smile at his outrage.

“—believing that we were simply waiting until the time was right to consummate our engagement—”

“I did not realize you intended to honor a promise we made at _eleven standard!”_

Chirrut shook his head mournfully. “I asked if I could marry you when we were of age, and you said yes, and we kissed. Any Justice will tell you, that is a marriage pact.”

Baze’s answer was a noise like a pa’owlick getting ready to charge. Chirrut grinned, opening his mouth to respond—

Cassian startled—as much as he could startle, caged in and strapped down like he was—at the sound of the siren, howling through the medbay. Baze and Chirrut both looked up, falling silent. Their expressions were suddenly serious, and Cassian grunted in wordless question.

Chirrut looked at him, then glanced to Baze. (When he turned, his robe gaped, and Cassian could suddenly see the bacta patches, the blaster-charred skin and scars.) 

Baze nodded. “They’re launching the attack on the Death Star,” he finally said, and Cassian felt something in his chest clench, his lungs, or—he choked, coughing wildly for a minute before he could find his breath again. 

“The plans made it out,” Chirrut added, and there was something reverent in his voice. No doubt he thought it was because of the Force, and not Rogue One’s blood, sweat, and struggle. (Though, even as he thought it, Cassian could almost hear Chirrut’s voice in his head saying, _your mistake is assuming they are not one in the same._ )

“They’re deploying several x-wing squadrons to target Erso’s exhaust port,” Baze said. He was still looking up, and it made his eyes look dark, liquid. “But I didn’t think it would be so soon—”

“The Princess made a strong argument for action,” Chirrut said, and something flickered across Baze’s expression.

“Good,” Baze said darkly, and Chirrut made a soft noise of protest. “No, it is good. It is just. She knows what it’s like to lose—everything to that unholy green fire. She should fight to avenge her homeworld, as much as we did for Jedha.”

Cassian had to swallow, to wet his lips, before he could whisper, “ _What_ …?”

Chirrut and Baze exchanged a look. “Just after Scarif, the Death Star was used against another target,” Chirrut said slowly. “A whole planet, burned from the sky. Alderaan is gone, and all its people—except the Princess. She was aboard the Death Star when it fired.”

Cassian hissed out a breath from between his teeth, thinking of Viceroy Organa. He had only met the man once or twice, and generally through the veil of polite deference a soldier offered his commanders, but—Organa had always gone out of his way to be respectful. Even of spies and assassins.

Chirrut, Baze and Cassian sat in mostly silence for the rest of the night, interrupted only occasionally by the sound of the meddroids, whenever Baze got restless and took up pacing. (His artificial leg made a certain ka- _thunk_  against the duracrete floor, and after a while it was almost soothing. Chirrut’s breathing and Baze’s uneven steps, their soft voices.)

Cassian was half-asleep when, off in the distance, he heard the crash of a wave against the shore. The rush of gulls. He was home again, and—

It was Chirrut’s hand cupping his jaw that woke him, and the world was abruptly alive with sound. Cheers, distant. There was _music_ playing, he could hear it drifting into the medbay. “It’s done,” Chirrut said, and there were tears in his eyes. When he smiled, they shone in the ambient light, like stars. “Cassian, the Death Star is—is done. It is gone.”

Cassian stayed awake into the very early hours of morning that night, listening to the far-off laughter and dancing, boots scuffling across the floor. All those familiar sounds of people, living.

 

 

 

He dreamt of golden light, reaching out and swallowing him up. He dreamt—

 

 

 

His sister was cooking, some sort of meat. The blood ran red into the fire, and the smoke was rubbing the inside of Cassian’s nose raw. His eyes stung.  _little brother,_ his sister said, and it was strange because she was still so young, her face as unlined and smiling as her funeral mask had been. 

_elder sister,_ Cassian said anyway, and kissed her hair. (He was taller now, and more weary. He could taste her cooking on her tongue, and how unstintingly she had loved him. When he was a boy he’d wanted to aim a blaster like her, cool and sure and sharp as sight. Now he did. 

Now he wished he could take back his wishing.)

_little brother,_ his sister said, and she kissed his forehead. _wake up._

Cassian opened his eyes and recoiled.

It took a long, long moment to calm the racing of his heart. Even longer to spark the recognition of where he had seen those eyes before, even if they had not been surrounded by scar tissue, deep-set and full of pain. Longer still to relax into the hand stroking his hair, though the arm extending it looked like the meat his sister cooked, ropy and reddened.

The architecture of Bodhi’s face had changed, shifted by what must have been extensive reconstructive surgery and bacta— _bacta suspension,_  Mon Mothma had said, and Cassian hadn’t stopped to think about that, too bitter and self-pitying to consider what that meant. How many weeks had Bodhi spent unconscious, kept dreaming, just to get him to a point where he could be in the world?

“You have…nice hair,” Bodhi said quietly into the silence. He was still petting Cassian’s, and Cassian’s breath caught. He coughed, he coughed until his chest ached and Bodhi was looking at him with wide eyes. 

Cassian tried a reassuring smile. That ached too.

Bodhi’s answering smile was lopsided; it clearly pained him to move his mouth. “They—meddroid says….I won’t be able to grow all of mine back. The roots…in my skin…were burned away. Ion grenade.”

Bodhi fell silent, and Cassian wanted to speak, say something, anything, but he didn’t know what to say. Apologizing seemed cruel, when Bodhi had fiercely insisted on his decision to defect, to fight beside them. Accepted the consequences, even the awful scarring, which reached from his hairline to his jaw, and down, disappearing into his collar.

Cassian licked his lips. “I had a sister,” he whispered hoarsely, in absence of anything else to say. Bodhi’s eyes went soft, and gentle.

“I—have a sister. I…think. Haven’t heard from her since…”

“What is she like?” Cassian asked, when Bodhi went quiet. The hand was still threading through his hair, but slower. It was—pleasant. (Cassian’s father used to do this, through the long meetings of the Separatist Coalition; it was like being small again, his head in his father’s lap and father’s deep voice reverberating in the air, speaking words of _self-determination_ and _labor, our labor_.)

“Kind. And—she could…make me laugh,” Bodhi said finally said, thoughtfully. His chest heaved. “She…liked maths.”

At some point, Cassian might have fallen asleep with Bodhi’s hand working through his hair, and the long litany of Rook relatives, cousins and family friends. Mothers who loved, fathers who stayed, and no one who was dead. They fought about school marks and money and whether their children would be more successful than they had, and not martyrdom. It was a beautiful dream, and Cassian slept in it.

Bodhi’s fingers threaded through his hair, and he slept.

 

 

 

After three weeks, Jyn climbed into bed beside him. The medcenter cots were narrow, really only built to accommodate a single humanoid body, but somehow she managed to slip beside him, tucking her chin against his shoulder. It felt strange to lie there in silence, cataloging the places where they touched—forearms, hips. Her cheek, warm through the medical robe.

She breathed. He breathed.

“You smell like shit,” Cassian finally said, his voice rough even to his own ears. Jyn was warm, and she did smell like she hadn’t had a sanisteam in a while, sweat and skin and that particular human sourness that came with it.

“Didn’t want you feeling self-conscious about how badly you stink,” she said, and he felt her elbow him in the side, but—very gently, like she was afraid of shattering him. Cassian’s breath caught at the touch of it.

He coughed, and Jyn flinched, pulling away. It took her a long moment to settle back where she had been, and even then her touch was gentler, as though she was afraid it would set him off again.

His chest ached, but he wasn’t sure for what.

“They have you doing missions?” he asked instead, because that was easier.

“Yeah,” she admitted, after a long moment. “Dead drops, mostly. Some speeches, which I’m still terrible at. I keep stealing your words.”

“You—you don’t have to,” he said shakily. “You know that, right? You—the Death Star is gone, your father’s name is cleared.”

“Did they tell you about Alderaan?” she asked. He nodded, and he felt her twitch. “I wasn’t—I didn’t move fast enough. Jedha and Scarif and Alderaan…I have to. Isn’t that what…”

She fell silent, and he felt her breath puff against his shoulder.

“Isn’t that what?”

She curled more tightly against his side. “What you would do,” she muttered, and she was so warm, buzzing, every muscle he could feel taut.

“Don’t know if…I’m an example,” Cassian said, and he saw her face fall out of the corner of his eye. “Look at where it got me.”

She exhaled, and then she was pushing her face against his shoulder, and Cassian felt his whole _body_ go warm, every nerve-ending on fire and every blood vessel suddenly pounding. “A hero,” she mumbled against his skin. “A hero, with—people who care about him.”

(It wasn’t the first time in three weeks that Cassian had wished that all the metal and bandages would vanish, and let him _move,_ damn it, but it might have been the time he wanted it so much. He wanted to wrap his arm around her shoulders, he wanted to say, _no no, if you knew what I’ve done—_ he wanted to—)

They talked of nothing much, until the sun was low enough to slant through the narrow windows and into Cassian’s eyes. The whole medbay was bathed in golden light, and when he asked if she didn’t have anything else to do, she shrugged. (She was still so warm.) It was only when he mentioned Mon Mothma that she groaned, and levered herself up onto her hands.

“Fine, if you _want_ me to go…”

(She stood, and the light caught on her hair, which he had not realized had coppery-brass in it.)

“Oh,” she said, turning back suddenly. She fished around in her pocket, and eventually drew out a durasteel cube, which she sat gingerly on Cassian’s chest. It was heavy, and there was a light on the front. It blinked. 

_on-off. on-on-off._

“What…?” Cassian asked, glancing up at her.

“They haven’t been able to find Kaytoo new hardware,” she said, and he detected the barest hint of a smirk. “So until they do, he’s stuck with the datacube containing his downloaded memory and software. Hope you know Galactic Emergency Transmit Code,” Jyn said cheerfully, patting the cube.

Cassian did. The cube vibrated, blinking out something crass and unrepeatable, and Cassian couldn’t help grinning. “ _Kay_ ,” he whispered, and the cube blinked, _H-E-L-L-O-C-A-S-S-I-A-N._

_I-A-M-G-L-A-D-Y-O-U-A-R-E-N-O-T-D-E-A-D._

“Yeah,” Cassian laughed, his chest aching again, sharp and good. (What had his father always said? _You know you are alive, because it hurts._ ) “Yes, me as well.”

 

 

 

On the morning of the thirty-second day, the meddroid came to his bedside and chirped its surprise when it found Chirrut, Baze, Jyn, Bodhi, and Kaytoo—blinking his displeasure at being manhandled by Jyn—at Cassian’s bedside. 

“Come on,” Jyn said, shifting from foot to foot. Kaytoo vibrated in her hands, and she scowled. “Get a move on.”

The process of separating Cassian from the durasteel casing which had kept his spine straight and his body immobilized was slow. From his perspective, it felt like a perverse sort of unshelling, as the meddroid peeled back metal arms, flat casing, and snipped the ties that had kept him bound. Jyn’s face was carved from stone, but Bodhi kept making soft noises, every time the droid said shit like, “Tissue around the distal radius still bruised—”

All the same, there was nothing quite like having an audience for when you first sat up under your own power; your first, wobbly steps. Mostly because they all broke out into cheers at once, and Jyn kissed Bodhi’s scarred cheek, even as he startled away like she'd hit him instead. Chirrut was blessing the Force, and Baze was grinning, quick to swoop in and loop his arm under Cassian’s shoulders when he faltered.

“There you are, my brother,” Baze said lowly. “We’ve got you.”

_F-I-N-A-L-L-Y,_ Kaytoo blinked, and when Jyn passed him to Cassian, he buzzed in Cassian’s hands. (It felt good to _touch_ something again, and Cassian grinned.)

Afterwards, Cassian was gingerly dressing himself—everything happened more slowly, took more muscles than he remembered, with all the low aching he would expect from disuse—when someone cleared their throat behind him. He managed to finish the excruciating process of pulling on his shirt before sighing, and turning to face the door.

He had a vague memory of the woman standing there—pale and short, slim, with a crown of braids. She wore white, like Mothma, and there was something in his air that reminded him unmistakably of Organa, but—he couldn’t place her. “Can I help you?”

“Leia Organa,” she said, and he stiffened despite himself. The hot ache it sent through his muscles almost made him double over, but Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan (the dead, the gone, because they hadn’t been smart enough, swift enough to save it) was already stepping forward, guiding him to sit back on the medbay bed.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as he struggled to steady out his breathing. She was sitting beside him on the edge of the medbay bed, and her hand was making soothing circles on his back. “I only meant to come and thank you for all you did, in helping us destroy the Death Star.”

He met her eyes tentatively. She had such dark eyes, like her father, but—they couldn’t be related, could they? She was about as brown as Jyn, and while Cassian hadn’t known Organa _that_  well, any child of his would have been darker than this woman. 

“What?” he rasped.

Leia Organa looked at her with her dark, couldn’t-be-inherited eyes. She was unflinching, and Cassian wondered if she’d inherited that instead. “I was there, beyond atmo during the Battle of Scarif, and the plans for the Death Star were entrusted to me to relay back to the Rebellion. So I know, keenly what you—did, what you sacrificed…You couldn’t have known you would survive. You were willing to give everything to the Rebellion.”

“We—had to get the plans out,” Cassian said. It was all he could think of.

“I know,” Leia Organa said “I do, I know, and I am grateful. But—you did so much more. Did you know my father? He used to say—”

“Are you coming? They’re serving actual organic protein in the mess tonight—” Jyn said as she breezed through to Cassian’s room, stopping dead when she saw the Princess sitting there beside Cassian.

“Oh,” she said simply.

“No,” Leia Organa said with a taut smile. She was standing again, slim and all in white. “No, I just—wanted to thank you. Captain Andor, and you. And truly, thank all of Rogue One for what you did. I was just telling Captain Andor that my—my father used to say that there was only one human destiny, and it was liberation. I cannot think of any who have so exemplified that as you and yours.”

Cassian felt something warm, reassuring, spread through him, like a bath or a drink of hot xotil. _There is only one human destiny_ —but Jyn’s face went still, frozen between something like flattered and something else, which was scorn. “Thank you, Your Highness,” she said stiffly, and Organa-the-Younger stiffened at that too, her spine suddenly very straight and her shoulders tight. 

“Thank you, Princess,” Cassian said before _either_ of them could add another word, forcing some of the warmth and gladness he was feeling into his voice. ( _there is only one human destiny and it is liberation_.) It must have worked, because Leia Organa relaxed a little, smiled.

“That’s all I wanted to say,” she told him quietly. “Captain Andor.”

“Princess,” he said, bowing his head a little.

“Do you know her?” Jyn asked, once the princess had swept out of the medbay, leaving the scent of arallute blooms in her wake.

“No,” Cassian said. “I’ve never met her before.”

Jyn shrugged, and lent him her shoulder to lean on as he stiffly hobbled toward the mess hall. (They only had to stop twice, to let him catch his breath.) When he leaned against the doorframe of the mess hall—breathing hard and winded, stars dancing behind his eyes—he heard a shout. “Captain Andor!” Bodhi said, taking him by the wrist and drawing him forward. Cassian could feel Jyn at his back, radiating heat like a broken hyperdrive, and they all were there together, standing before the table laid out with uninspiring greyish _somethings_.

“We tried,” Baze offered, as Chirrut accepted the plate from him.

_N-O-W-E-D-I-D-N-T_ , Kaytoo blinked.

Cassian’s whole back ached, and his teeth, and his eyes. Everything hurt, and this meant he was alive. They were alive, and home.  “No,” he said, swallowing the lump in his throat. “No, it’s perfect. It’s perfect.“


End file.
